Iraq's neighbors brace for fallout

SIMMERING MIDEAST

The 5 largest nations are prepared for limited intervention in the U.S.-led war.

January 14, 2007|By Bill Marsh, the New York Times

For now, the five largest nations bordering Iraq are keenly watching out for their interests: siding with Iraq's Sunni or Shiite Muslims, controlling their own domestic rumblings and seeking to increase their influence in the region.

So they prepare for limited, "asymmetric" battle: "deploying certain military elements for very specific purposes," said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It wouldn't be country-on-country warfare."

Their intervention in the Iraq war, Cordesman said, would escalate like this: Neighboring countries send advisers, small weapons and money to their allies. Then come military trainers and perhaps volunteer forces.

Heavy weaponry follows.

Any of which may be occurring in Iraq now, according to experts. Larger-scale war requires fit armies, and analysts find most of the five lacking -- a possible brake on a broader conflict, at least in the short term. In judging military prowess, equipment inventories are the least significant indicator, according to Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"Skills, tactics, training and doctrine are the most important factors, and harder to assess -- the software, if you like, as opposed to hardware," Biddle said.

All five face personnel challenges.

How well could their forces perform when they have little or no training in battle?

"Syria's skills are not very good," he said. "Jordan is the best of the lot, also the smallest. They have impressive equipment and would probably use it more effectively than most other armies in the region. But even their training has its limits."

Nations could gear up for a bigger war with hired help from the fast-growing global industry of private military contractors.

If Iraq fractures along ethnic lines, Turkey, with its restive Kurdish minority, is already primed to intervene. Throughout the 1990s, it did not hesitate to strike Kurdish rebel bases in northern Iraq.

"They're worried that Kurdish nationalism will result in the dismembering of their country," said Steven A. Cook, also of the council. "It's as if the Mexicans were reclaiming Texas or California."

Today the five have little incentive or ability to join wholeheartedly in a wider war. The most likely outcome, Biddle said, is a long, grinding stalemate among rivals in Iraq, supported by neighboring countries, that produces war-weariness and an eventual settlement -- in which "the only way to defeat the enemy is to exhaust them."